Vaulted Deep Signs a Groundbreaking Contract With Microsoft

Friends of Earthshot,

We’re thrilled to share that our portfolio company Vaulted Deep has signed a groundbreaking carbon dioxide removal (CDR) contract with Microsoft!

Under the deal, Vaulted will deliver up to 4.9 million tonnes of durable carbon dioxide removal over 12 years through its waste management infrastructure. The agreement runs through 2038 and will allow Vaulted to rapidly expand its proven approach - already permitted, operating, and delivering measurable results - to new sites across the U.S.

“Vaulted Deep provides a differentiated, scalable approach to permanent carbon removal with low technology risk,” said Brian Marrs, Senior Director of Energy and Carbon Removal at Microsoft. “Its work delivers immediate climate benefits while stimulating local economies and addresses long-standing environmental challenges that communities face every day. We support this solution as part of our broader effort to accelerate durable, high-integrity carbon removal.”

Earthshot’s Investment

We invested in Vaulted’s Seed round concurrently with their formation in August 2023 because we believed that the founding team of Julia Reichelstein and Omar Abou-Sayed combined unparalleled CDR market and subsurface expertise, along with the lowest cost permanent carbon removal solution on the market today.

In addition to generating carbon credits, Vaulted’s technology offers meaningful community co-benefits. By injecting organic waste deep underground, they prevent pathogens, odors, and pollutants such as PFAS from contaminating local environments. This approach avoids nutrient runoff, groundwater contamination, and air quality issues often associated with traditional waste disposal methods like landfills.

In addition to this contract, since our investment the company has:

• Signed a $58.3M contract with Frontier, an advanced market commitment consortium including Stripe, Shopify, Google, Meta, and McKinsey, only 7 months after its founding. This was Frontier’s largest ever contract.
• Raised a $32M Series A from Prelude Ventures including participation from Earthshot.
• Won $8M in the XPRIZE Carbon Removal competition as one of the top four out of 1,300 applicants.
• Scaled operations at their initial facilities in Los Angeles, California and Hutchinson, Kansas. To date, Vaulted has removed nearly 18,000 tonnes of CO₂ and diverted more than 69,000 tonnes of organic waste from surface application, landfilling, and incineration, and is also laying the project development groundwork for many more sites to meet their burgeoning demand.

Leading the Way

Microsoft itself is a pioneer in the carbon dioxide removal market for its commitment to becoming carbon negative by 2030 and plan to remove all historical emissions by 2050. Through this purchase from Vaulted Deep, they are taking one more massive step towards meeting these goals, and we commend them for their pioneering leadership. We are particularly excited to see this purchase because Microsoft is one of our Earthshot LPs and has been a close partner for many years.

We appreciate your belief in our ability to find, invest in, and support companies like Vaulted Deep, and we look forward to sharing more updates from the portfolio as they execute on their truly consequential missions.

-Dawn Lippert, Mike Jackson, Matt Logan, Austin Blackmon & Ramsay Siegal

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